Vodka shots and `I love youŽ texts - How Canadian couples vacationing in Hawaii prepared for the end(The Star Religion)

14 january 2018 02:18:05

They had 10 minutes to live.So they used it well: they dressed, packed up some water and their medications, sent “I love you” texts to bewildered family back home in Hamilton and Brantford. They hugged each other and drank two shots of vodka.Then they waited for the ballistic missile to hit.This was how Saturday started for two local couples vacationing in Hawaii. In a place called Paradise, to be exact.“You make your amends with God,” Mike says an hour after he learned he would live another day. For 38 minutes, people in Hawaii thought they might die after a button was mistakenly pushed and an official alert blasted out to cellphones across the state telling people the worst had happened — nuclear missiles were heading straight for them. It was a colossally frightening false alarm. Read more: ‘I thought, Oh my God, this is it.’ Panic and terror in Hawaii as missile alert sent in errorGet used to it. Under Trump, the threat of nuclear war is the new normalOpinion | Thomas Walkom: ‘Little rocket man’ cleverly changes debate around North Korean nukesMike and Suzie, married 21 years, are from Hamilton and have been enjoying Paradise for a few weeks now. They don’t want their last names published for home safety reasons. They are away with another couple, from Brantford. They thought that walking across lava fields, climbing peaks and doing helicopter tours would be the adventurous highlights of their trip. But at 8:07 a.m. Saturday, all their cellphones suddenly blared a deafening sirenlike sound and the screens filled with this emergency alert: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”With very real international concerns about North Korea’s nuclear capability — concerns the Canadian couples had joked about before heading to the United States — they accepted that the alert was real.“What do you do?” says Mike. ̶ ...